BizWeek Geeks Tell Chic Money Honey, 'You're Done-y'

Bloomberg, the new owner of Businessweek, is dumping Maria "Contractually Obligated to be called 'Money Honey'" Bartiromo from her gig as a BW columnist, Business Insider reports. That's not the worst decision in the world.

Bartiromo wrote a Q&A column called FaceTime, which consisted of her asking questions of some business guy each week. She's not a bulldog questioner, but she's not incompetent either. Her strongest point was access: Hank Greenberg, Tim Geithner, and Jeffrey Katzenberg have all sat for her in the past month.

Her downsides: She's perceived as friendly to CEOs, which is part of the reason she gets that access. And whatever they pay her for that column is certainly inflated by her own celebrity, which is hard to justify when Bloomberg's getting ready to lay off a bunch of BW staffers. They'll be able to get good access with a much cheaper columnist, anyhow; who else will CEOs rattle off talking points to, bloggers? LOL!